The Rose (1979)

Drama loosely based on the life and death of Janis Joplin. 

Bette Midler plays Rose, a troubled singer who enters a downward spiral of addiction and self-hate. Alan Bates plays her promoter, but not very well. 

I found it strangely compelling despite it being overwrought. Bette Midler cries and shouts a lot. The onstage song performances are probably the best aspect of the film, and Midler really puts everything into them.  

It’s set in the late 1960s but the period detail is muddling and everything looks very 1979. Worth seeing – if only once.

The Statement (2003)

Directed by Norman Jewison, this drama was adapted from a novel by Brian Moore, which was itself based on events relating to real-life Vichy French police official Paul Touvier. 

Pierre Brossard (Michael Caine) was a Nazi collaborator, and has been at large in France for nearly 50 years. He has been protected by loyal Catholics and others, but when a lawyer (Tilda Swinton) and a colonel in the National Gendarmerie (Jeremy Northam) start to pursue him he’s forced to take more extreme measures.  

Caine is absolutely excellent as a man plagued by guilt and wracked with psychic pain, yet someone who is also still a self-interested racist bigot. I could totally believe his character as he lurches – with his fervent faith and his heart problems – from one crisis to another. 

The narrative works well, with some fairly dramatic moments. The only unsatisfying element is that it’s never quite explained why so many people go to such lengths to defend the indefensible. Yes, the various priests were worried that their own crimes might be revealed, but how does that apply in a wider sense? It seems like there’s a joined-up conspiracy to protect him, involving the Church, members of the police force and government officials, some of whom have little connection to the events of 1944.

The diverse cast also includes Alan Bates, Ciarán Hinds, John Neville and Charlotte Rampling.

The Go-Between (1971)

Brilliantly evocative and resonant adaptation of L.P. Hartley’s 1953 novel, with a screenplay by Harold Pinter. Dominic Guard is Leo, the 12-year-old spending the summer of 1990 with the Maudsley family in their large Norfolk country house. He finds himself becoming a go-between for Marian Maudsley (Julie Christie) and Ted Burgess (Alan Bates), the local farmer she’s secretly having an affair with.

Like the book, it focuses on issues of social inequality. Marian’s affair transgresses class boundaries and is therefore taboo. It also probes into sexuality and how naive young Leo’s own consciousness of adult relationships is crippled by the way he is used to facilitate a union he cannot understand.

Julie Christie is excellent as the charming-but-manipulative Marian. Edward Fox is also strong as the posh-but-dull Hugh, unable to compete with the “savagery” of Ted.

The hot summer is expertly conveyed and you can feel the heat building to the inevitable storm that marks the climax. As child actors go, Guard is right up there (he was also in Picnic at Hanging Rock). The music, by Michel Legrand, is perfectly judged – sometimes lovely, often foreboding.

With the vivid way it’s shot and soundtracked, at times it has the feel of a horror film. But the horror turns out to be an emotional one. Rather than manifesting itself in sudden scares, it’s a terror that echoes down through the decades.